Robert Kanigel: The One Best Way [2000] paperback

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) is regarded as the original time-and-motion man, the first efficiency expert, a man who in 1911 said, "In the future the System must be first". To organized labour, Taylor was a slavedriver, to the bosses he was an eccentric and a radical. To himself he was a misunderstood visionary, possessor of "the one best way" who under the banner of science would erase the antagonism between labour and management. He is also the man most responsible for the modern obsession with time and efficiency. This biography is also a business book but rather than focusing on balance sheets and boardrooms it is about making things and the men who make them.